New York Fringe Festival Report: ‘Rubble’

Dixie Sheridan Bruce Vilanch and Amy Wilson in “Rubble.”

Reviews of shows from the New York International Fringe Festival will appear on ArtsBeat through the festival’s close on Aug. 25. For more information, go to fringenyc.org.

In “Rubble,” Alvin Gordon, an aging TV comedy writer, wants to make one last sitcom pitch. He’s just positive the world will love his latest brainchild: “My Brother the Pope,” about His Holiness’s black sheep sibling.

Alas, in his network pitch meeting, Alvin cannot help but gratuitously insult his potential boss. Then, to make matters worse, an earthquake strikes. Trapped under the flotsam and jetsam of La-La-Land, he passes the time conversing with an obligatorily kooky cast of characters both real (a security guard, a grumpy agent away on vacation) and hallucinated (his vicious ex-wife, a tuneful Freud, a Virgin Mary threatening eternal damnation).

“Rubble” doesn’t offer a lot of plot. The show is primarily a vehicle for a long series of punch lines about the entertainment industry. This is perhaps not terribly surprising, given both the premise and the pedigree of the playwright, Mike Reiss, a longtime “Simpsons” writer and producer. Some of these one-liners are quite funny; many, many others (tired jabs at Joan Rivers’s plastic surgery, or the glut of gay men in musical theater) could stand to meet the cutting-room floor.

Bruce Vilanch - a former Edna Turnblad in “Hairspray” and an Emmy-winning comedy writer himself â€" is very much at home playing Alvin. The show-stealer, though, is Jerry Adler, as the agent whose steadfast crabbiness even Hawaii cannot conquer. Lord knows what he must be like when back in Los Angeles â€" which, as Alvin describes it, makes condemnation to hell look a lot like a lateral move.

“Rubble” continues through Aug. 25 at the Players Theater, 115 Macdougal Street, Greenwich Village.